1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of merchandise management system, and information storage medium and, more particularly, to the field of merchandise management system for managing displayed prices of products for sale or the like in a store comprising multiple product exhibit shelves, and information storage medium on which a control program for the merchandise management system is stored.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the amount and kind of products to be dealt with in a store such as a grocery store is increasing, while a price of each item is changed frequently (in some cases, a number of times each day) such as when offering a bargain sale under present conditions.
Conventionally, as techniques for managing displayed prices of these products, there are methods, for example, according to the Patent Documents 1 to 3 listed below.
However, these techniques are all based on the assumption that a content of each shelf tag will be rewritten automatically via wireless communication.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-133519
[Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-276810
[Patent Document 3] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-035143
The disclosure of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-133519 is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The disclosure of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-276810 is incorporated by reference in its entirety. The disclosure of the corresponding US Publication No. 2003182193A1 is also incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The disclosure of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-035143 is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
However, in each of the conventional techniques described above, to rewrite the content of the shelf tag, it is necessary to establish radio communications to numerous shelf tags, and then sending/receiving information for rewriting, and therefore, it is necessary to install a high-power transceiver permanently, for example, in a ceiling of the store.
Thus, in such a conventional case, there is a problem that a large engineering work is also needed for installing the transceiver, since its configuration includes the transceiver permanently, and there is another problem that, if in a rented store, the techniques themselves described above can not be used, since it is not allowed to make a hole in the ceiling and so on.
These problems also lead to enormous costs and efforts such as when the store is renovated or the conventional merchandise management system itself is updated, and as a result, there is a problem that, in a store whose scale is not so large, it is impossible to install the conventional merchandise management system as described above.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of each problem described above, and an object of the present invention is to provide a merchandise management system, and information storage medium in which a control program for the merchandise management system is stored, wherein the merchandise management system can be easily introduced, and operated, and can centrally manage displayed status on shelf tags corresponding to products traded at the store, even if the store is a relatively small-scale store.